










































































































































































































































































































































































































































































t 





, i 


4 



* /■ 


•1 


1 " 



f 







Opportunities and Responsibilities 

of 


Citizenship 

1 


^ \*- 

F'' A? VANDERLIP 

President The National City Bank 
OF New York 


ADDRESS AT THE 

Commencement Exercises 
Carnegie Institute of Technology 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 

June 16, 1914 
















f 74 


Opportunities and Responsibilities 
of Citizenship 

This opportunity to be with you affords me sev¬ 
eral sources of gratification. It was a gratifying and 
pleasant thing to come because I was so strongly 
urged to do so by my distinguished friend, the patron 
saint of the Institute of Technology. It is gratifying 
always to have an opportunity to meet a group of 
men and women who have shown the seriousness of 
purpose and the intellectual ability creditably to com¬ 
plete a formal course of instruction, and who now 
stand ready to receive academic recognition for work 
done. To me it is especially gratifying to meet such 
a body of students, when I know that their work has 
been in the line of technical training, that there is 
going forth into the world of work such a body of 
graduates, such a group of students with minds effec¬ 
tively prepared for serious work and hands trained to 
make expression of theoretical knowledge, and whose 
aims we may know, by the very fact that they have 
chosen to pursue such a course of training and study, 
mmst be aims of usefulness and accomplishment. 

Perhaps there is something of a personal note in 
the pleasure which I have in greeting young technical 
men, for I had my first experience in earning a livli- 
hood as an apprentice at the machinist’s trade, and 
later made such a start as our colleges were then able 
to offer on the road toward becoming an electrical 
engineer, and I have, therefore, though you may 
regard the ground for it slight, some feeling of fra¬ 
ternity and fellowship with technical men. 

Gratification at the opportunity of seeing this great 
institution and of meeting this graduating class has 


3 


its serious note, however, in a feeling of deep respon¬ 
sibility that goes with the opportunity of speaking to 
you on this memorable day in your lives—for it is a 
memorable day, a day which will always stand out as 
marking the division between two periods; it is a 
moment when your minds are open, and when the 
right word, when a thought with the real ring of 
truth and sincerity in it, might, to some of you at 
least, be a guide or an inspiration of moment in your 
future. The opportunity to speak to you thus becomes 
to one seriously considering what it means, an occasion 
of real responsibility. 

It was suggested to me that I tell you in the light 
of my experience what I believe will be factors that 
will be likely to contribute towards your success in 
jmur profession. I am glad to do that, and I will 
very briefly lay down what seems to me some import¬ 
ant considerations likely to make toward material 
success, but if experience has taught me anything it 
has taught me that material success is but half the 
story, that if you are to accumulate what Dr. Eliot 
has so aptly termed “the durable satisfactions of life,” 
you must look outside the mere accomplishment of 
material success for most of them. And so I have 
taken for my subject what seems to me a broader and 
more important title. 

Before proceeding to a consideration of that sub¬ 
ject, however, it may be of some interest to you to 
have a word in regard to your outlook for material 
success in your professions, and for me to say some¬ 
thing of those qualities which I believe will be help¬ 
ful to you in aiding to attain such success. 

I suppose a question that has come to all of you, 
and one which at the moment you may be thinking 
about, is a question that is outside of yourselves, out¬ 
side of the quality and character of training which 
you have received here, and one which has to do with 
the general industrial and social order of the day; 
that is to sa}^ I suppose you have all had raised in 
your minds the question of what are the opportuni- 


4 


ties offered to a youth in industrial and business life 
today? Are those opportunities the equal of those 
which your fathers encountered, or have difficulties 
been built up by the revolutionary development of 
our industrial life, by the aggregation of capital and 
the increase of its power through the formation of 
corporations, by the keener competition which char¬ 
acterizes our times, so that the chances of success are 
less tlian in former days, the struggle for its attain¬ 
ment greater, the prize harder to secure, the worth of 
the individual more difficult to demonstrate. 

To all of those doubts I would emphatically answer, 
no. You are under no handicaps because of the time 
in which your career is placed. 

1 believe I can give you the most unqualified assur¬ 
ance of that. I see the situation from the point of 
view of membership in executive committees of im¬ 
portant corporations, and if I know anything at all 
of business and industrial conditions, I believe that 
there has never been a more insistent call for well 
trained, energetic men of character, ability and initia¬ 
tive, nor that the world has ever been ready to pay 
greater rew^ards, or offer so many prizes for especial 
distinction, as is the case today. I speak from a con¬ 
siderable experience in the search of men of excep¬ 
tional qualifications to fill places of great importance, 
and there is no fact clearer to me than the fact that 
our industrial and business life today is rich beyond 
anything that has gone before in opportunity for 
men with ability, industry, imagination and character. 

And now just a word as to those qualities, char¬ 
acteristics, and habits of work which are most likely 
to lead the individual to the attainment of some part 
of these large material rewards which are waiting. 

It w^ould be trite for me to tell you that you have 
not finished your education, that you have only read 
the preface of the book of preparation, that your edu¬ 
cation is only started. These occasions are well called 
commencements. Do not for a moment think that 


5 


you can now lay down your books, that in the future 
you are to be relieved from the necessity for continu¬ 
ing to exercise the systematic habits of study of col¬ 
lege days, that you are now to take up practical work 
and leave the school room behind you. 

At some colleges the undergraduates have an enter¬ 
taining ceremony on the completion of their course 
of mathematics of burning the calculus. Do not 
deceive yourselves by thinking that you can now 
make a pile of your school books and have a bonfire. 
If 5^011 wish success, you may make of them only a 
metaphorical bonfire that will furnish a light not to 
be danced around with feelings of relief and diversion, 
but rather to be used for further reading and study. 

The measure in which you continue your systematic 
education, continue systematic reading—not techni¬ 
cal reading alone, though you must do that to keep 
up with technical progress—but reading that will give 
you broad understanding, that will help you to con¬ 
sider present-day problems in the light of how men 
have solved similar problems in other days, reading 
that will give you culture, insight, quickened human 
sympathies—the measure of such reading that you do 
will largely be the measure of the quality of mind 
that you will bring to the tasks of life. 

There is a theory entertained by many that we have 
reached a time when work should be less urgent than 
in other days, when men should have more leisure, 
that their hours of labor should be shorter, and periods 
of recreation longer. If you hope to gain one of the 
prizes of life, do not adopt that theory for your indi¬ 
vidual guidance and practice. It may be true for 
the man whose day’s work is solely made up of an 
expenditure of physical effort; there never was a time 
when it was less true of the man who hopes to make an 
intellectual success of life. 

I have often said to young men who have asked 
advice about their work, that if they hoped for a large 
measure of success they must make up their minds to 


6 


do two full days’ work each day. They must do one 
full day’s work at their regular appointed task—at 
their job; to that day’s work they must bring energy, 
a quick intelligence to comprehend not only the details 
of what they are doing, but the relation of what they 
are doing to the larger movement to which their work 
belongs, and a desire not alone to accomplish the stint 
of work that will justify their day’s pay, but they 
must voluntarily and vigorously assume every other 
duty to which they can lay their hand in addition to 
that stint, so that they may learn not alone the 
technique of their own task, but the technique of 
the work that others are doing. When they have done 
all that, however, they have done but one day’s work, 
and they have done but half of what should be the 
real measure of a day’s accomplishment, for the man 
who is determined to make a distinguished success. 

I tell you, if you are to secure one of the large prizes 
of success, you must make up your mind to adopt the 
theory of the double days’ work, and when the regu¬ 
lar day’s work is finished, you must be prepared sys¬ 
tematically to devote some considerable portion of 
time to study, toward gaining a broad and intelligent 
view in its large aspects of the work with which you 
are engaged, toward making additions to your stock 
of general knowledge, to the understanding of prob¬ 
lems of the day, to your duties as a part of the social 
organization. 

You will not do that by a quick scanning of news¬ 
paper headlines, nor a detailed study of the baseball 
scores; you will not do it by any desultory and un¬ 
planned system of reading. You will only accom¬ 
plish it in full measure if you have learned here in 
college, or have natively implanted in you, habits of 
systematic mental application; the intelligence to lay 
out definite courses of study and the strength of pur¬ 
pose to adhere to them. 

Now, just one more thought in regard to those 
qualities which make for material success. To for¬ 
get yourself is more important than to remember any 

7 


single thing you have ever learned in your lifetime. 
Do not worry about your personal relation to a piece 
of work, but give the deepest attention and considera¬ 
tion to the execution of that piece of work. Never 
mind whether you have what you regard as your full 
share in it; never mind whether you are getting what 
you feel to be your full measure of credit; have the 
single purpose of getting the work done, of seeing 
that every proper means is employed to do the work 
better than it has been done before, and forget your¬ 
self, the credit you will receive, the relation you 
personally occupy toward the work, and if you will 
do that, I give you my word you will have accom¬ 
plished for yourself the greatest possible good. You 
will not be unwatched. Men will have an eye to your 
capacities and characteristics, their observation will 
be far sharper than you guess, and when that over¬ 
seeing eye finds the man who is interested in the job 
more than in himself, that man will be marked for 
promotion and for larger things. 

But I am using up my time without getting to my 
subject. Before going to it, however, there is still 
one word that I must sa}^ If you think it is trite 
because it has been said many times, do not forget 
that it embodies the greatest truth that can be said 
about material success, although it is a truth that is 
frequently obscured and lost sight of. Integrity, 
honesty of purpose, good character, are the founda¬ 
tions upon which success must depend. You may 
hear stories of gains that have been made by unfair 
means, by sharp practice, by shrewdness that only 
just keeps within the law; but those gains are not 
success, and in so far as you will establish a reputation 
for honor, in so far as you put sound character into 
your work and never try to reach a goal by a short 
cut that means some loss of your own self-respect, you 
will lay a substantial foundation for real success. 
This is not a mere preachment to a graduating class, 
it is one of the most practical suggestions that I could 
give you out of the years of experience that I have 


8 


had. For just mere practical shrewdness in the way 
of advice by which to reach position and secure 
reward, there is no observation that I could make 
that would be of more use to you than one that I once 
heard, to the effect that God had somehow so fixed 
the world that a man can afford to do about right. 

You are going forth to lives of technical work where 
you hope to make use of technical training and scien¬ 
tific knowledge. That field of labor, however, by no 
means encompasses your relations. You are going 
forth as members of a highly organized society, at a 
time when the recognition of mutual dependence and 
responsibility in all society has been tremendously 
quickened, at a time when individualism is rapidly 
giving way to a larger recognition of both the strength 
and the responsibilities of mutual social relations. 
You are, therefore, beginning active life in a period 
when the responsibilities and the opportunities of citi¬ 
zenship are of the greatest importance. 

We are in a time when there is going on much 
readjustment in regard to our views concerning busi¬ 
ness ethics, concerning natural laws affecting the dis¬ 
tribution of wealth and the varying proportion that 
different classes are entitled to in that distribution. 
It is a time when there is great criticism of the estab¬ 
lished order; when there are many new theories of 
how the powers of government should be exercised. 
These days are fruitful in the birth of hopeful plans 
for giving equality of opportunity, easier conditions 
of life, a wider distribution of prosperity by the magic 
of legislation. I would not be surprised if there had 
been more statutes enacted in the United States dur¬ 
ing your lifetime than had ever been enacted in ail 
the world before, since the beginning of history. [ 
know there are 57,000 statutes on the tablets of New 
York State alone, but we are dragging far in the rear 
of some other States in the exuberance of new 
legislation. 

Now, I tell you there is no new political economy. 
There is no novel arrangement of society which will 


9 


permit you to succeed otherwise than by the exer¬ 
cise of those same qualities that have brought success 
in other generations. But you are entering active 
life at a time when sound judgment and serious pur¬ 
pose must be brought to the testing of an endless 
number of legislative schemes, to the making of poli¬ 
tical decisions that will be of the greatest moment. 
It is undoubtedly possible to legislate in a way that 
will be helpful in effecting a more just division of the 
results of labor, legislation that will make a more 
equitable distribution of prosperity, but it has been 
well said that the method of dividing prosperity is of 
little importance if there is no prosperity to divide. 
In order that we may all have prosperity it will be 
one of your most solemn duties, and a duty the wise 
exercise of which will have much to do with the oppor¬ 
tunities for success in life for you to make wise poli¬ 
tical decisions. 

Educated men in accepting the same rights of citi¬ 
zenship that uneducated men accept assume a far 
greater weight of responsibility. It is the duty of 
the educated man to study with intelligence the politi¬ 
cal questions of the day, to form opinions of his own, 
rather than to accept the dictum of others, to be an 
intelligent guide to those whose minds have been less 
well prepared to form intellectual judgments. 

You are a picked body of men. Out of every four 
hundred children who receive the ordinary training 
in a public school, only one proceeds to college and 
finishes his college course. You now stand enrolled 
in that selected class, and you have assumed responsi¬ 
bilities with the education which has been given to you 
which should quicken your interest in public affairs 
and should guide you toward positions of leadership. 

With us a majority controls actions, and the view 
of the majority tends to usurp the control of pub¬ 
lic opinion. Do not fall into the easy habit of taking 
your opinion from majorities. You have been given 
the equipment and you now have the duty imposed 
upon you of thinking for yourselves. 


10 


George William Curtis, in an address on the leader¬ 
ship of educated men, described this duty of leader¬ 
ship in a way that is worth your reading. Doubtless 
leaders express a sentiment which is shared by the men 
and women around them, he said, but it is the leaders 
who form and foster the sentiment. They are not 
the puppets of the crowd, light weather-cocks which 
merely show the shifting gusts of popular feeling. 
Educated men do not follow because they cannot 
resist nor make of their voices the tardy echo of a 
thought they do not share. They should not be 
dainty and feeble hermits because they are educated 
men. They are equal citizens with the rest. They 
should be men of strong convictions and persuasive 
speech to show their brethren what they ought to 
think and do. 

That is the secret of leadership. It is not sub¬ 
servience to the mob. It is not giving vehement voice 
to popular frenzy that makes a leader. To do that 
makes a demagogue. Leadership is the power of 
kindling a feeling of sympathy and trust which will 
inspire eager followers. It was not a mob, an ignor¬ 
ant multitude swayed by a mysterious impulse, it was 
a body of educated men, wise and heroic, because they 
were educated, who lifted this country to independ¬ 
ence and laid deep and strong the foundations of the 
Republic. 

You have studied the sciences. You know some¬ 
thing of the immutable natural laws of physics and 
chemistry. Such training should have given you a 
respect for law, a respect for law which should be 
carried into your consideration of social relations. 
You should have learned that you are in the midst 
of an ordered world, and if your minds have grasped 
the beaut}^ of natural laws, you will have gained an 
increasing respect for order and a readiness to become 
a part of it. 

Speaking with this thought in mind. President 
Hadley has said that a man must comprehend that 
he is something more than a mere producer. “He is 


11 


a member of the body politic, living in constant and 
complex relations with his fellow-man. The right 
adjustment of these relations between man and man 
is a more difficult and important thing than the 
development of technical skill. National education, 
if it is to be really national and not individual, must 
prepare the way for this adjustment. It must teach 
people not only to make the most of themselves, but to 
do the most for others. They must learn how to com¬ 
municate their ideas so that others will understand 
them, to arrange their labor so that others can enjoy 
its fruits, and to take part in the work of government 
so that the community as a whole shall he directed by 
political intelligence instead of political ignorance.” 

The educated man should be neither a conservative 
nor a radical; or, in the political phrase of our day, 
neither a progressive nor a stand-patter. He 
should know too much to do that. You should recog¬ 
nize the value and worth of much in the existing 
order, but you should be able wisely to see that life 
is growth and growth is change; and while you should 
welcome and aid change, you should be far too wise to 
believe, as some radicals seem to, that whatever is is 
wrong; that whatever is novel and untried must hold 
in it promise of good. You should learn to cultivate 
a just moderation; dot reconcile change with order, 
progress with stability. That is progressive conser¬ 
vatism; that is conversative progressiveness. 

Years ago Charles Sumner said, “Rightly under¬ 
standing these terms, who would not be a conserva¬ 
tive; who would not be a reformer?—a conservative 
of all that is good, a reformer of all that is evil,—a 
conservative of knowledge, a reformer of ignorance, 
—a conservative of truths and principles whose seat 
is the bosom of God, a reformer of laws and institu¬ 
tions which are but the imperfect work of man.” 

If I have been able to make myself clear to you, you 
will have seen that I believe that in one word is encom¬ 
passed the law of material success, the scope of your 
duty to society, the measure of your responsibility to 


12 


citizenship. That one word is service. Make up your 
mind to serve. It is service that receives reward; it 
is by service, forgetful of self-interest, service for the 
sake of accomplishment, that you will gain the great¬ 
est material rewards. It is by service to society, by 
recognition of rights more sacred than any that are 
personal to yourself that you will gain an attitude 
toward life rich in permanent satisfactions. It is by 
intelligent service, free from self-interest, in the poli¬ 
tical activity of your time, that you will justify the 
great gift of citizenship which has been bestowed upon 
you. 


13 




I— 


'• ft 




» 







r 


I 


t C 



,» ■ 


V 


V 







